An employee may be entitled to redundancy or severance pay if any of the following applies:
- a workplace instrument (e.g. an award or agreement) that applies to the employee contains redundancy pay entitlements
- the employee works for an employer that employs 15 or more employees and has more than 12 months continuous service (some exceptions apply).
If an agreement that included redundancy provisions was terminated in a certain way less than 2 years ago and the employees covered by that agreement aren’t covered by a new agreement, the old redundancy provisions may still apply.
From 1 January 2010 all employees working under Commonwealth workplace laws who:
- have at least 12 months continuous service and
- work for an employer that employs 15 or more employees may be entitled to redundancy or severance payments (to a maximum of 16 weeks pay) under the NES.
There are some exceptions to this. See: When redundancy is not payable.
Important! An employer may be also liable to pay redundancy pay under certain preserved redundancy provisions.